“Insulin For Cancer and Everything”
TIME 1944
There is a doctor in Mexico City who gives insulin for practically anything — typhoid fever, syphilis, peritonitis, malaria, rheumatic fever. Dr. (and Lieut. Colonel) Donato Perez Garcia gives enough insulin to bring a patient to shock stage (perspiration, high pulse, coma, high blood acidity), then he injects a solution of glucose by vein to neutralize the insulin and bring the patient to. Mixed with the glucose is the drug ordinarily used to fight whatever disease he is treating. Dr. Perez Garcia believes that the insulin makes the bacteria succumb more easily to the drug.
Husky, 45ish Dr. Perez Garcia graduated from the Army School of Medicine. Since then he has concurrently conducted his Amy and large civilian practice.
He has worked on the insulin treatment for 15 years, has used it for 11,000 treatments without effect. Lately he spent seven weeks in the Lower California Military Zone, just over the border from the U.S. While in Lower California Dr. Perez Garcia cured General Juan Felipe Rico’s wife of gall bladder trouble, gave about 155 treatments on 40 cases, including a woman paralyzed with tertiary syphilis. After four treatments she walked.
Doctors of the San Diego Naval Hospital went over to Tijuana to hear Dr. Perez Garcia. They were impressed. They invited him over to treat a few stubborn cases of malaria and rheumatic fever. A malaria patient had no more fever after his first shock. (Dr. Garcia’s full course of treatment is usually four shocks, five days apart.) One rheumatic fever patient, after one treatment, refused to go on. But of the other two, one got well, the other improved.
Last week Naval Hospital doctors were still scratching their chins about the insulin treatment. But they were impressed by Dr. Perez Garcia. They would like him to come back and do it all over again.
